


Golden Phoenix

by krbk



Series: Golden Phoenix [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Canon Typical Violence, F/M, I will update the tags as I go, Pirate AU, Pirates, being rowdy, cursing, good sibling relationship, mild medical stuff is mentioned but it is nothing graphic, nothing that exceeds that really, swashbuckling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2020-07-21 04:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19996012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krbk/pseuds/krbk
Summary: Four years ago, Edward Elric lost his brother during a pirate raid. Now, he will stop at nothing to get him back. He made a promise to himself under those October stars, and like hell is he going to break it.In which Edward Elric takes to the Amestrian seas to bring Alphonse home.





	1. Chapter 1

There are not many times in which someone has the right to be picky about the way they wake up from being knocked unconscious. The whole experience, quality aside, is almost infinitely preferable to the alternative of  _ not _ waking up. Especially when there is a dull ache pounding against the inside of Edward Elric’s skull that makes him feel, strangely, like he is especially lucky to be regaining consciousness in the first place.

However, fleeting impressions aside, waking up in an entirely unfamiliar room with a blurry stranger looming over him is certainly not his first choice. He blinks his eyes a couple of times, letting some of the unfamiliar surroundings come into focus. The room he finds himself in is very dim save for a faint warm source of light somewhere out of view, but his head swims when he tries to lift himself up to look around. 

A firm yet gentle hand stops him. 

“I’d not recommend moving around too much right now.”

Edward blinks toward the voice.

“Wh-”

“Might want to go back to sleep.”

He feels like he’s trying to form thoughts through layers of thick, damp wool. Something about this place is not exactly right to him, but thinking too hard about it makes his already-compromised vision tilt towards a spiraled inky blackness. He turns his eyes blearily towards the stranger leaning over him, struggling to keep his eyelids from falling.

Edward sees a flash of straw-blonde hair before he loses consciousness again. 

* * *

He doesn’t have any dreams. His sleep is filled instead with fleeting sensations- violent red flashes across his eyelids, accompanied by the crack of a musket and the stench of spent gunpowder. A crushing pressure on his stomach. Someone is screaming and choking in a lungful of acrid smoke and he’s falling, falling, falling-

Edward drifts back into consciousness to the sound of a wooden door making hard contact against a doorframe. He doesn’t attempt to open his eyes yet, not wanting to pass out again.

“This dog doing any better?”

Edward heard the creak of a wooden chair next to him and a soft sigh.

“He’s still alive, if that’s what you’re asking, sir.”

His head still felt like it was stuffed with cotton. Dog? Both voices were entirely unfamiliar- one deeper and masculine, the other rather feminine. 

“Hmph. We’d better hope he stays that way.”

There are some shuffled bootfalls a few feet away. The person with the lower voice speaks up again, slightly closer now.

“I think we’ve taken a real gamble with this one, Rockbell.”

The other person stays silent for a few seconds. Edward feels a cool hand on his forehead. He has a moment where he’s altogether not sure he’s not still dreaming.

“I know.”

Another hand ghosts gently over his abdomen, bringing his attention to a peculiarly tender area along the side of his ribcage. Some cloth moves faintly against his skin under their touch and Edward realizes that there’s a layer of bandages covering his side nearly from hip to breast. 

He instinctively tries to open his eyes, feeling an urgent need to know exactly what had happened to him. His pupils do not seem to adjust well to even the semi-lit room, but Edward can focus on the person fussing over his bandages, albeit fuzzily. 

She’s a young woman, with long straw-blonde hair tied back with what looks like a faded green bandanna. She has dark blue eyes that unexpectedly catch his and there’s a mixture of concern and caution, almost like she is simultaneously scared  _ for _ and  _ of  _ him. 

“Please be careful. Don’t sit up yet.” 

Edward thinks to ask this woman where he is and what had happened to him, but his voice barely comes out as a croak. His mouth is overwhelmingly dry. He frowns. 

She turns, operating somewhere outside of Edward’s limited range of vision, and returns holding a small metal cup. Edward instinctively attempts to raise his right hand to take it from her, but gets no neural response from his automail. 

He tries his left, flesh hand, but finds no motion available there, either. Something is roughly binding his wrist to the frame of the cot he’s on. 

There’s something definitely wrong. He tries to jerk his arm free from the binding. It doesn’t budge. 

“What-“ he manages hoarsely. 

The other person in the room chuckles, not altogether in a kind way. 

“Good luck.”

A few footfalls and Edward hears the door close again. 

The woman reaches behind him to grab something. He flinches (as best he can flinch, in this state), suddenly wary of her intentions. She produces a narrow straw pillow, and she moves to place it under his head. Something about her eyes lets him know that she noticed the flash of mistrust. 

“Don’t-“ she took a moment, picking up the metal cup, “I’m not trying to hurt you.” 

Edward finds himself much better at focusing his vision now. This woman couldn’t be much older than him, if at all, he realizes. 

She leans forward to press the rim of the metal cup against his lips. Edward has a feeling that trying to sit up would end poorly (he was already holding onto consciousness by a thread), so he tries his best to sip at the cool, fresh water from the reclined position. 

It’s the most delicious water he’s ever tasted, he thinks. He has a brief moment of frustration with how slowly this woman was allowing him to drink- he felt like he could down an entire ocean of it. 

“Take it easy,” she murmured, “you haven’t drank anything in three days.” 

She tilts the remainder of the cup toward him. Edward swallows the water and takes a second to wet his lips. 

“Th- three days?”

His voice barely scratches into audible territory, but the woman nods. 

“That’s how long you’ve been here, anyway.” 

He clears his throat. 

“What happened?” 

The woman presses her lips together in a thin line. She glances back at the door that the other person in the room had left through. 

“Well-”

Edward shuts his eyes. Flashes of memories fade in and out- the flap of a heavy black flag, the glint of steel on steel, the heart-stopping thunder of cannonfire, the hot, damp feeling of a blood-saturated shirt against skin-

“You lost a battle.”

-a roughhewn cloth over his eyes, struggling against hempen ropes around his wrists- the swaying of an unfamiliar deck beneath his feet-

“And you were taken as prisoner.”

-a final, heavy blow to the back of his head, the likes of which could only have been delivered by the unforgiving butt of a musket. 

“Shit.” 

She’s quiet for a long moment, busying herself with refilling the cup.

“Foul language from a navy boy.”  
  


Edward says nothing in response, wrinkling his nose in a slight grimace. The woolen feeling in his head hasn’t disappeared, but he hears every single alarm bell in his head go off. He struggles to sit up, protesting vision be damned. He doesn’t get very far. The woman’s hand stops him.

“Who are you?”

“I’m the person who saved your life.”

She holds the cup up to him again. He drinks. 

He eyes her warily. The man from earlier- his injuries- the black flag...

“Why?” 

The woman doesn’t look directly at him, finding an idle interest with the rough wood panelling near the foot of the cot he laid on, then the small covered window on the wall across from them. There was an unexpected tint of trepidation to her expression, held in a slight furrow of her brow. 

“I think you should try to get some more rest.”

Edward isn’t instilled with overwhelming confidence at her lack of response, but finds it difficult to protest as heavy darkness encroaches on the edges of his consciousness and the woman’s face seems to swim before him. 

_ She doesn’t look anything like a pirate _ , he thinks. 

He lets sleep claim him once more.


	2. Chapter 2

The next time Edward wakes up, the blonde woman has her back to him, sitting on a low stool in front of a desk on the other side of the room. There’s no ambient daylight coming in from the small window, and the woman has a few white wax candles burning as she is engrossed with whatever is lying on the surface in front of her.

He takes a brief sensory inventory. Edward’s head feels rather raw, but finds that the thick, cottony feeling previously clouding his thoughts is absent. There’s that strange tenderness to his ribcage where he can feel the bandages against his skin and his automail arm remains unresponsive, but he’s able to turn his head and look around.

He can only see a few shapes and outlines in the dim candlelight, but he gathers that he’s in some sort of infirmary. There’s a low table next to his cot with an assortment of bandages and miscellaneous metal tools, along with a few glass bottles and jars full of things Edward doesn’t recognize. One of them is open and emitting a familiar herbal scent of some disinfecting poultice. 

The woman turns around at the sound of him clearing his throat. Her face is illuminated by the warm glow of the candlelight.

“How do you feel?”

Edward frowns and tries to sit up. It’s awkward with his metal arm unresponsive and the other still restrained, compounded with the now-pressingly intense pain of his abdomen. He groans and lays back down. He finds himself increasingly frustrated at his situation- he can’t move, he doesn’t know where he is- he doesn’t even know the name of this woman who is taking care of him.

He lets an edge of irritation sharpen his tone:

“What exactly did you do to my arm?” 

“I just unplugged the nerves from your shoulder port. Your arm is fine.” 

“And then tied the other one down, I see.” 

Edward doesn’t bother hiding the hostility and distrust in his voice. She frowns and crosses her arms, now turned with her back against the desk. The gentle demeanor she had held before had vanished.

“Listen. You’re lucky you’re still breathing, you know.” 

Edward narrows his eyes. 

“What do you mean?”

She stands up, brushing back strands of long, pale blonde hair from her face. Her hair is loose, unrestrained by the bandanna she had been wearing before. There are small dark circles under her eyes that do nothing to dim the calm defiance she levels at him. 

“I’m sure you know pirates aren’t exactly in the practice of taking in military dogs, especially ones with as bad a temper as yours, so please forgive me if I take a few precautions to ensure my own safety while I work at making sure you don’t die.” 

Edward doesn’t cower at her words. He meets her glare as best he can from his reclined position.

“Why take me in at all, then?”

She sighs like he’s the dumbest person she’s ever met. 

“You’re Captain Hohenheim’s son.”

He finds himself at a complete loss for words. He ignores the pain in his side as best he can and sits up fully, staring at her in shock.

“How could you possibly know that?” 

“Have you literally ever seen yourself in a mirror?” 

He’s quiet. She tilts her head questioningly.

“He _is_ your father, right? Captain Van Hohenheim?” 

Cogs spin fruitlessly in his mind as he stares at her. 

“Is this his ship?”

Edward is taken aback by the surprised loud guffaw that leaves her. She uncrosses her arms and sits back down on the stool in front of her desk, chuckling. Her elbows rest on her knees and she shrugs, looking out the window. 

“You think I’d be the medic on a boat captained by Van Hohenheim?” She laughs again. 

He doesn’t quite understand what she’s getting at. She turns and reads his confused expression:

“Captain Hohenheim would surely have someone more _experienced_ than me attending to his crew.”

The woman’s tone is an unusual mix of derision and awe, which throws him briefly. He is used to one or the other, depending on with whom he is talking, but very rarely together. 

He raises an eyebrow at her. In truth, Edward had seen his father’s face on wanted posters more than he had ever seen it in person. He was a legend whispered about in taverns and galleys alike, and Edward had no privilege of insight granted by inheritance that actually gave him any impression of what kind of man his father _actually_ was. Aside from some bastard who left his mother when Edward was barely old enough to understand what had happened, that is. 

“I’m still not sure what he has to do with why I’m here.”

“You’re the spitting image of one of the most famous pirates of our time. Anyone would have to be insane to kill Hohenheim’s son.” 

Edward tries to laugh, but is cut short by the sharp pain in his ribs. 

“And I suppose I’m here because you want to ransom me off to him.”

She doesn’t say anything, just narrows her eyes curiously at Edward.

“Sorry, but that’s just not gonna work out.” 

“How so?” She frowns and tilts her head in confusion.

“My father doesn’t give a shit about me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have so much fun writing this kind of dialogue, especially from these two. Next up is a beast of a chapter, where we'll get into Edward's backstory more concretely- in fact, it's all backstory. I'm still editing it, so expect it to go up in the next week or so. :-)


	3. Chapter 3

Edward Elric had had a mostly normal upbringing. His family had lived together in a small countryside home that was only a few miles’ walk from the Amestrian shoreline, and he had memories of spending summer afternoons dragging his mother around by the hand, pointing at the marine life he found in the rocky tidepools littering the beach.

The rolling hills that blanketed the half-valley they lived in were always bristling with abundant wheat or barley, and the nearby sea was so rich with fish that they never had to worry about going hungry. Trisha Elric, his mother, spent her time sewing and knitting items to sell in the nearby village, occasionally hemming trousers and skirts on commission. 

His brother, Alphonse, was one year and four months younger than him, and the kind older women who would bring dresses and skirts to the house for Trisha to tailor would always comment to their mother that her two boys were nearly joined at the hip. Alphonse looked at him like he set the moon in the sky, and Edward let him believe it. 

Edward and Alphonse spent their early childhood making friends with local dogs and cats and chasing around the neighbors’ chickens, getting into harmless trouble and trying to learn as much as they could about the world around them. They were always asking questions of anybody who would listen- solving the little mysteries of life as they went. They learned how to count the chimes of the church bell, they learned how to husk wheat, and they learned where to find the prettiest wildflowers to take home to their mother. 

The two of them were by nature curious boys, always needing to know the reasoning for anything and everything they could think of. They wanted to know where their father was, and why asking where their father had gone made their mother cry. 

They didn’t figure out the answer to that one until much later. 

His mother used to tell Edward how much he looked like his father. He would frown. Even before he understood what had really happened, he knew that he didn’t like that comparison. His mother would smile sadly and say that his frown was just like his too. 

And it wasn’t until Edward was a few years older that he truly understood what the man he had called his father had done to their mother by leaving her. 

About three years after the last time Edward and Alphonse had seen their father, a horrible plague swept over the countryside. Trisha Elric was a strong and healthy woman, but the sickness seemed to seep into her very bones and sap her completely of vitality. Their mother was gone within five short days. 

The brothers’ world had crumbled from right beneath their feet. Alphonse had turned eleven a few short days before their mother had fallen ill. Edward had to bury his mother at twelve years old. The only thing of value the two of them owned was a silver pocketwatch that had once belonged to their grandfather.

The two of them had wandered into the village when the growling in their bellies became unbearable, searching for something to eat. A few of the ladies who had known Trisha took pity on them, taking them in for a night at a time, giving them a hot meal and a roof to sleep under.

Edward and Alphonse lived like that for about a year and a half, surviving off of scraps and the sympathy of the village women until the day that an Amestrian galleon docked right off of the shore. Edward remembers the first glimpse he had gotten of the huge white sails in the distance. He had initially thought they were clouds on the horizon.

A group of officers in cornflower-blue tailored uniforms had marched smartly into the village, asking the thirty or so townspeople standing in doorways and leaning out windows if they had anyone who wished to enlist. Ten thousand cenz a month, they said, room and board provided. 

Edward and Alphonse had shared a look and unanimously moved to approach the officers. They said their goodbyes to the women who had been so kind to them and followed the blue-suited men to their boat without more than a wistful glance back towards the hill where their house still stood. 

* * *

The weeks and months following their departure were rough. Neither Edward nor Alphonse had ever been on a boat before, and spent much of the time hanging over the rails of the galleon while the crew in blue uniforms laughed, not altogether unkindly. They’d all been there, they said, at one point or another. The boys learned to keep their eyes on the horizon and try not to eat more than they knew they could keep down (not that that was particularly hard- it wasn’t like there was abundant food onboard). 

It took longer than either of them would have altogether liked, but the two of them eventually adjusted and found that they could scramble around the decks faster than any of the other soldiers. Their young bodies adapted to the sea life easily- muscles and tendons and instincts attuned to the needs of the ship. They lived and breathed the salt air that came in on the sea breeze and found joy in their abilities for the first time since their mother died. 

Edward turned fourteen on that galleon during its four-month summer coastal recruitment tour. Alphonse was still only twelve, but was already a few inches taller than his older brother. A few tipsy soldiers poked fun at Edward for his height at first before they learned the hard way that a skinny five foot tall kid could launch himself across a galley table and land a punch just as well as someone twice his size. 

The two boys didn’t get outfitted with true military uniforms- they weren’t technically enlisted until they arrived in the capital. They ran around deck in ragged leftover clothes from other crew members, who, despite themselves, smiled openly at their abundant youthful energy.

The four tiered decks of the galleon offered a wealth of information that the two of them could have never before imagined- they listen to soldiers tell stories about places they’ve been, things they’ve seen, people they’ve known. In those four months onboard, Edward and Alphonse learned more about the world than they could have ever learned in their small seaside village.

They learned how to curse in four different languages, and how to tie knots so intricate they looked like roses. They learned that their noses and shoulders both freckle in the summer heat and their hair, when sun-bleached, turns the color of burnished gold. Alphonse keeps his hair cut short, learning how to trim it monthly with a pair of heavy metal scissors (borrowed from the infirmary) with the help of the broadly muscled yet gentle man in charge of the bow cannons. Edward didn’t bother. His hair soon reached past his shoulders, and the old boatswain taught him how to braid it to keep it out of his face. She was patient and kind, and eventually he could weave his hair back in a plait even faster than her scarred and wrinkled (but practiced) hands could. 

Edward and Alphonse were inducted into the Amestrian navy almost immediately upon landing in the capital city (aptly named Central). They were handed uniforms, standard-issue swords, and shown to their barracks, where they trained for several months under an intimidating dark-haired woman who taught the two of them how to hold their own in a fight and more. 

It was just after Alphonse’s thirteenth birthday that him and Edward were given their first station. They were assigned to a narrow clipper accompanying a treasure galleon headed for Liore. The voyage ran as planned without so much as a stormcloud; they ensure that some surely priceless royal dowry was escorted safely into a nameless monarch’s coffers. They were paid fairly but modestly, and set sail again.

The two of them fell into the rhythm of these sorts of assignments. Spending a month or two on domestic boats, protecting valuable cargo or escorting some royal family member. It was not as if Amestris was actively engaged in any sort of war- that had ended with the bloody termination of the Ishvalan Conflict, something that both brothers find most personnel reluctant to discuss. They’re told that they still must keep vigilant against the black sails of pirates, but they only have to draw their cutlasses a half-dozen times, and have cause to swing them far less. One might say that the work was monotonous, but the Elric brothers would consider it nothing of the sort.

They were fed, they were safe, and most importantly- they were together. Officers dared not separate them on assignments; their division leader- the black-haired woman who trained them- made sure of that. She seemed to take a particular favoring to the two of them. She didn’t go easy on them by any stretch of the imagination, but Edward would sometimes catch a faint glimmer of pride in her eye when he or Alphonse would outperform their peers in drills. 

Edward and Alphonse lived like this for a little over six months. Edward turned fifteen and Alphonse grew nearly half a foot in height. They had looked at each other and laughed and told the other that they were getting old. 

They cast out of Central on a formidable square-rigged brigantine headed southeast toward Ishval during the autumn of 1711. The voyage was to take a month and a half, they said. The weather will be so nice- the sands of Ishval were kinder this time of year, they insisted. They were going to be sailing through notoriously dangerous waters, but it was nothing the White Athame couldn’t handle, the young clean-shaven captain had crowed, tapping the heavy wooden hull of the galleon with his pristine white-gloved hand. 

The first week or so went exactly as planned- slow, easy sailing, never getting quite far enough to be completely out of view of land. They would anchor nightly at small islands when they sailed through the beginnings of the eastern archipelago- disembarking in the early evenings to swim in the cool, clear water and drinking straight rum from glass jars while lounging in the white sand. Alphonse turned his nose up at the stuff, but Edward took one deep gulp of the pungent liquid handed to him and nearly retched up his dinner right there on the beach. The soldiers got a good chuckle out of that, telling him he’d learn to like it one day. 

It had been a calm night, gentle coastal waves lulling them to sleep in their hammocks with a bellyful of fresh-caught fish. Edward and Alphonse awoke with a start to the thunder of cannonfire, followed by the telltale shudder of contact against their ship’s hull. Two pairs of wide golden eyes had made worried contact in the darkness of the bunkroom as they scrambled to their feet, searching for their swordbelts. Another boom, another world-shaking impact. 

Crew members streamed around the decks like ants, bumping into walls and each other with each continued impact, every set of sleep-bleary eyes holding the same panic. They were most certainly outgunned, and their hull couldn’t hold out forever against a continued barrage. Four, five, six thunderous  _ crack _ s. 

The captain’s voice rang out from the top deck, muffled through the layers of wood and hurried bodies. Black sails, he had bellowed, ordering all to man positions. Soldiers rushed to their gunning stations, Edward and Alphonse heading topside. They dodged powdermen and ducked under rammers, darting over and under crewmen before arriving to the section of railing that held the cannon they were stationed. 

The sea beyond and below the brigantine was inky but full of small, choppy waves as the ship shook with the fire they were taking. Edward squinted into the dark horizon to see the silhouette of the other ship- he counted three square-rigged masts and a looming forecastle, easily twice the size of their own ship. With the next muzzle flash, he saw the flap of their night-black flag in the wind. 

The following minutes were a blur. Edward and Alphonse hurried into the routine of firing their cannon- swab, pack, load, aim, fire, repeat. Their eardrums were so shot from the repeated explosive blasts they can barely hear their captain shouting some unintelligible warning- they continue gunning. Alphonse had looked up absently from ramming powder into the barrel to see the imposing figure of the pirate frigate turning in a wide angle towards them. The deck of the brigantine shuddered beneath their feet, absent of an accompanying cannonblast. Their ship was starting to creak and crack and take on water- and nobody on board had confidence in its ability to stay together much longer.

The captain of the other ship apparently had the same impression. An eerie near-quiet settled over the sea between them as their cannons ceased to fire and instead the portholes began to close. The frigate’s sails raised and began to billow in the night breeze as it picked up speed, heading directly towards the brigantine. In less than a minute it was upon them.

“ _ BRACE! _ ” 

Edward doesn’t have very clear memories of what happened after the prow of the frigate smashed through the railing of the White Athame. There was a crushing weight on his torso, and with it had come a sharp, searing pain that threatened his grasp on consciousness. He remembers meeting the frantic golden eyes of his brother as he tried to move whatever was pinning Edward down- to no avail. 

A large, hulking shadow of a man had come up behind Alphonse, illuminated by a fire set somewhere on deck. He tried to shout, tried to warn him, but he couldn’t get enough air in his lungs to make a sound. Smoke had swirled around his younger brother’s head like a wreath.

Edward could do nothing but watch as Alphonse was easily plucked off his feet and tossed over the giant man’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to warn him. The last thing Edward saw before losing consciousness is a large, dark tattoo on the man’s shoulder in the shape of a snake eating its own tail.

There was a blast of fire, an explosion, and Edward felt only excruciating pain as he was flung clear of the deck of the brigantine. Then, nothing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops, all backstory! next chapter up soon :-)


	4. Chapter 4

Edward opened his eyes for the first time almost a month later. 

He had been found by a small group of fishermen, washed up on a beach near where the White Athame had sunken. They had heard the cannonfire and the following explosion, they said. They hadn’t been expecting survivors. To find Edward alive was nothing short of a miracle, they had murmured. He had lost so much blood. Two limbs gone-

He had woken up to find himself in an unfamiliar bed, shirtless and wearing a stranger’s breeches. He had lost all feeling in his right arm and left leg, and he had turned his head to inspect the place where he expected his arm to be. Edward had nearly passed out cold again when he saw his flesh stop just past his collarbone, replaced by a coldly intricate metal arm worked into his very bone. 

Edward was told that he had been about the luckiest boy alive to have washed up near a town with a retired automail smith. The older smith and his husband took in the unconscious, crumpled form that the fishermen had brought them, the two of them nursing Edward to stability so they could outfit him with a set of automail. It was rather crude, at first, given the scarcity of parts in such a remote fishing town, but the smith took it upon himself to refine the automail as best he could while allowing Edward to heal. 

It took about a month of adjustment for Edward to be able to even move any of the synthetic joints the smith had woven into his nervous system. He would spend several frustrating hours a day just trying to curl his hand into a fist. He used a crutch for balance when moving around the older couple’s house, bumping into their furniture constantly and swearing profusely. He was wordlessly frustrated with himself for not being able to grasp the use of his new limbs immediately.

Edward woke up one morning and saw the date on the calendar in his room while washing his face. The reminder of his brother’s birthday hurt worse than any powder cache explosion, and it was the kind of phantom pain that made the roots of his teeth ache with the feeling of helplessness- the mast fallen on his chest, making it hard to breathe. He didn’t leave his room on that November day. 

The smith and his husband were very kind to him, and Edward was undeniably grateful for that, but he spent most of his waking hours worrying about Alphonse. He started teaching himself to hold utensils in his left hand, and managed to scribble down a slight approximation of the tattoo he had seen on the man who kidnapped his brother. He asked the men if they had ever seen anything like it, and both of them sadly shook their heads no. He worked harder at gaining control over his metal arm and leg. He was going to need them if he was going to find his brother.

After another three months of living with the two men, Edward could almost braid his own hair using his metal fingers. The plaits he could do were messy and not nearly as neat as the grizzled boatswain had taught him, but it gave him a sense of normalcy to have his hair back and away from his face. 

One late spring night, over a meal of fish stew (Alphonse’s favorite), Edward announced to his hosts that he planned on rejoining the navy, as it was his best chance to get his brother back. Both of them smiled sadly and nodded, telling him that he was welcome back at their home anytime. 

The next morning, Edward bid farewell to the couple and set out into the warm sea breeze, heading to the docks to seek out passage back to Central. He felt clumsier than normal on that passenger boat with his metal foot unused to the rocking and swaying of the water. The fishing village wasn’t terribly far from Central, so Edward was back in the barracks within the week. His division supervisor, the dark-haired woman, hid her tears when he told her what had happened to Alphonse. She had frowned when he told her his plan to search for him. She told him in short words that she had also lost a loved one to the black sails. 

“Be careful,” she had said, “but give them hell.”

Edward Elric dedicated himself to doing just that. He found that silver watch in the pocket of the trousers he had been wearing when he washed up in that fishing village. The night before his first return voyage, he pried it open. The clock ticked quietly, a few beats behind. He took out a small knife from his issued gear. On the internal face of the watch, across from the actual timepiece, he began to scratch in a date in small, narrow characters:

**_3 Oct 11_ **

He tucked the scrap of parchment with the crude drawing of the tattoo identifying Alphonse’s captor into the watch and closed it. That night, he slept in his bunk with the pocketwatch clasped in his flesh hand. He swore to himself and to the empty bunk next to him that he would never forget the day his brother was taken from him. And he will never give up trying to get him back. 

* * *

Edward spent four long, lonely years in the navy without his brother. Any chance he got ashore, he slid into bars and brothels, asking anybody who spoke Amestrian if they had ever seen the strange symbol before. He went into libraries and spent hours poring over tomes full of chemical symbols and family crests, searching for anything that matched in the slightest. He turned up with absolutely nothing each time, but he would reach for the familiar weight of the pocketwatch in his trousers and vow to continue searching.

He got into fights much more frequently than he should- without his brother, Edward found that he gave a lot less of a fuck about being civil to people. He didn’t have anybody to protect except himself, so he let himself throw punches at rude drunk men or corrupt merchants on behalf of the people who couldn’t. It got him into trouble more often than not, but before the consequences could ever catch up to him he’d be whisked away to the next port under a white and green Amestrian sail. 

Edward spent his nineteenth birthday on some navy carrack heading west, with an almost entirely unfamiliar crew. It was an entirely uneventful day, and he almost felt silly for even remembering it as he leaned on the railing of the prow. He and Alphonse used to make a point of celebrating each others’ birthdays, and the memory even now left a sour taste in his mouth. He ran a finger over the design inlaid on the exterior of his silver pocketwatch. 

  
_ I’ll never stop searching for you _ , Edward promised to himself, to Alphonse, to the millions of stars above his head. He shut his eyes.  _ I’m going to find you. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now it's time to get back to the present story- look forward to some enlightening conversations in the next chapter :-)


	5. Chapter 5

Edward awakens from a sleep rich with dreams. The blonde woman is sitting at the wooden desk again, this time audibly tinkering with something in front of her. A leather-bound book laid next to her arm as she worked. 

He coughs quietly. Sunlight is streaming in through the glass window, and for once he can see a bit of blue horizon. His side still feels rather sore, but he feels bold enough to sit up. When Edward turns to look over at the woman, she’s peering at him curiously through an odd-looking pair of spectacles. The pale green bandanna was back, and the rest of her hair was pulled into a knot somewhere behind her head. 

“You seem to be doing better.”

Edward raises an eyebrow at her. The last time they had talked, he had been rather short with her. Fairly, he rationalized- she and her crew did, indeed, kidnap him with the intention of using him as a bargaining chip. 

Edward frowned. He took a closer look at what was laying on her desk, now unobfuscated. 

“Is that my fucking arm?”

Sure enough, Edward glanced down to see his shoulder port empty, arm completely disconnected. He made as to stand up and confront her (and get his arm back), but was stopped by the restraint on his left hand. He grunted in frustration, pulling fruitlessly at the rough rope around his wrist. Without his automail arm to give him extra torque and balance, he felt frustratingly powerless. 

“Calm down,” she reprimands, as if talking to a small child. “It’s not like you were using it while asleep.”

Edward gives an incredulous scoff. 

“It’s still my goddamn arm! Can you imagine someone taking  _ your _ arm off while you sleep?” 

The woman ignores his reproach, instead giving him a withering look that reminds him inexplicably of his drill sergeant. 

“You take shit care of your automail, you know.” 

She held up his detached arm in one hand, a small metal tool held in the other. She had pried off the outer plating of the forearm and was pointing the tip of her tool at some inscrutable metal innards. Edward stared disbelievingly, brows furrowed. 

“You see this? All rusted. I’m surprised you could even hold a sword with this wiring so messed up. Did your engineer never tell you that you have to actually  _ take care _ of your advanced metal prosthetic limbs?”

“Shut the fuck up.” 

She raised her eyebrows. 

“I’m trying to help you out here. Pretty shitty engineer to not tell you, though. I’m guessing you haven’t had this looked at in at least-” 

“I said shut the fuck up.” 

Edward is glaring daggers at her. She seems unfazed, if at minimum bemused. 

“Soft spot, then.” 

She sighs, looking down at his arm again. She absently runs her fingers over the inner plating. 

“I’ll clean out this wiring for you and reattach the limb, don’t worry. Sorry for taking it without asking, I suppose.” 

The woman turns around again, settling the arm on the table. Edward watches as she takes to the task with startling confidence, reaching for tools on her desk without looking at them. Edward’s curiosity slowly got the better of him, overtaking his indignation about the situation.. 

“How do you know so much about automail?” 

She doesn’t respond immediately, and he realizes it’s because she’s holding a screw between her teeth as she works. She carefully takes it out and puts it back in place near his elbow joint. She takes a deep breath. 

“My grandmother. She was one of the best automail engineers who ever lived. She served the military for almost fifty years. I was her apprentice.” 

Edward considers that response. He leans against the wall adjoining his cot, letting his head drop back against the panelling. He evaluates the knots on the wooden ceiling as he words his next question.

“What are you doing on a pirate crew, then?”

She glanced back at him, pausing in her work for just a moment. She takes a second to answer. 

“This was her ship.” 

Edward meets her eyes in surprise.

“What did a world class automail engineer like your grandmother have to gain from the pirate life?” 

The woman returns to work on his arm. It takes her a while to answer that particular question. 

“Redemption, I think.” 

Something about the way that she says it makes Edward feel rather disinclined to ask what exactly she means. Instead, he watches her work in silence. 

Several minutes pass before she finally breaks the quiet.

“What’s your name?”

Edward had closed his eyes, listening to the faint tapping of the woman working on his automail and relishing in the feeling of the slow, familiar rocking of the boat.

“Sorry?”

“I asked what your name is.”

Edward eyes her. She had glanced back at him again, an expectant look on her face.

“Oh- uh, Edward.” 

“You got a surname?” 

For some reason, he finds himself reluctant to give up his family name. It was one of the only things left he still concretely shared with Alphonse. In response to his silence, she presses her lips together. 

“Alright. Edward it is.”

She slides another screw into a port on his automail. 

“I’m Winry, but the crew calls me Rockbell.”

Rockbell twists a few more metal parts into place, then takes out a small blackened rag to wipe down the entire arm. She rotates the arm, inspecting it from all angles, bending the elbow and wrist joints. She produces a small can of oil from somewhere on the desk and carefully tilts the nozzle into the inner casing of each individual pivot point. She turns around and holds up the arm for him to see, grinning widely. 

Edward has to admit that he doesn’t think he’s seen it in better condition since it was first installed. He’s still wary of her, but he has to admit that she does seem to know what she’s doing.

She stands up from her stool, sliding it closer to his cot. She sets his arm down on the low table with the bandages and poultices she must have been using to care for him, carefully sliding them out of the way. 

“Can you lay down? I’m going to plug your automail back in.” 

It’s a clumsy process, trying to lay back down from his lounging position against the wall with only one restrained arm. 

Rockbell rests a gloved hand on his shoulder, peering into the wiring of his port. She slides those strange spectacles back down the bridge of her nose.

“Hold on, this needs a little bit of work.”

She stands again, retrieving a couple of tools from her desk and returning to the bedside. Edward flinches away from the initial contact she makes with his synthetic nerves- it’s an uncomfortable combination of numbness and sensation that sets his teeth on edge. 

“Sorry, I just need to get around these.”

She’s unexpectedly attentive as she works, warning him when she has to touch a nerve. Edward finds, strangely, that he trusts her steady touch, bracing only when she tells him to. It only takes a few minutes, but Rockbell sits back on the stool and examines her handiwork. 

“Before I reattach your arm,” she starts, crossing her arms across her chest, “I need your word that you won’t try to hurt me or escape.” 

Edward looks at her evenly. 

“I won’t try to hurt you. Or escape.” 

Rockbell spends a moment searching his face. It’s clear that she doesn’t entirely trust him, but she lines up his arm with the port. 

“This is going to feel pretty bad for a second,” she mutters, before swiftly locking his arm into place. 

It does. It feels like every nerve ending in his body lights up at once, hot and cold, numbness and sensation, adapting to the addition of the synthetic plexus into his nervous system. Edward screws his eyes closed and grits his teeth.

The feeling subsides after a few seconds, and Edward opens his eyes.

“Fuck,” he gasps. 

“Yeah,” Rockbell agrees. “Can you move it?”

He flexes his fingers into a fist and rotates his shoulder.  _ Holy shit _ , he thinks. Edward couldn’t remember the last time his arm had moved this smoothly. He looks at Rockbell incredulously. She’s looking more smug than he thinks is strictly necessary. 

“Let me guess- you haven’t been able to move your arm this well in years.” 

Edward grunts noncommittally. She’s very obviously proud of her work, he’ll give her that, and he reluctantly admits that she has cause to be. 

“Now sit still, I need to check on these bandages.”

Edward raises his metal arm above his head to give her space to lift the bandages covering his waist and ribcage. He smells the same sharp herbal poultice from before, and watches as Rockbell gently dabs at the wound. 

“You’ve got a lot of nasty scars,” she states, as if she was talking about something as banal as the weather. 

“Yeah.”

“Got all of them from serving?”

“What does it matter?” 

He raises an eyebrow at her. She rolls her eyes at him and dips a clean cloth into a basin of water.

“I’m trying to be conversational here.”

He hisses through his teeth when the wet cloth makes contact with his skin. 

“It’s just water. Don’t be a baby.” 

Edward is quiet, watching her as she redresses the wound and sets fresh bandages in place.

“Why are you doing all of this?”

“I thought I already told you the answer to that.”

Edward frowns. 

“I know why you didn’t kill me, but why go to all of this extra work? Why even talk to me?”

Rockbell finishes with the bandages and takes a moment to wipe her hands off on a rag. There’s an edge of something he can’t quite identify in her voice. 

“You can likely imagine that advocating for someone in this uniform doesn’t exactly make yourself the most popular person on deck.” 

Edward tilts his chin back and stares up at the ceiling. 

“Maybe you should have killed me, then.” 

He can practically hear the frown on her face as she cleans up the supplies on the table.

“This may surprise you, but I’m not in the habit of killing strangers simply because of their affiliation.” 

“Unusual for a pirate.”

Rockbell’s footsteps move to her desk. Edward continues analyzing the heavy planks of the ceiling. 

“Do you know why most of us do what we do?”

“I don’t really give a damn.” 

She scoffs. Edward hears her shuffle around at the desk. 

“So arrogant. Typical.” 

“I-”

Rockbell cuts him off.

“I’m betting you joined the navy because it was the only option that was better than wherever you were before.” 

“Why w-”

She interrupts him again. He glances up to see her fixing him with an intense stare, arms crossed. 

“It’s really just a yes or no question.” 

Edward props himself up on his automail arm. He doesn’t answer, returning her gaze defiantly. 

“I’m taking that as a yes.

“Do you know how I know that’s the case? Every person on this boat, save for me, joined at some point for the exact same reason. They paint it as is this shining beacon of opportunity for people without futures- a way to make something for yourself when all you have to offer is a capable body they can use for cannon fodder.

“Every single member of this crew is ex-navy. That fact alone is why I was even able to convince them to keep you alive in the first place. Every one of them knows what it’s like to be blinded by the wool they’ve pulled over your eyes.” 

“You’re out of line,” Edward starts lowly, sitting up completely. He can feel the familiar flame of rage spark in his throat, coiling into a thinly-controlled inferno bubbling beneath his skin. He tightens his automail fingers into a fist against the rough bedding.

“You know  _ nothing _ about me,” he spits. “Do not  _ pretend _ to know what my life has been like. Don’t you  _ dare _ compare me to the band of cowards and lowlifes you run with.” 

Edward reaches with his automail arm to untie the knot still binding his left wrist to the cot. He loosens it and swings his feet to the floor. Before he can rise fully, Rockbell is standing over him, brandishing a large wrench.

“They are  _ nothing _ of the sort.”

“They’re  _ pirates _ . They kill and loot for  _ fun. _ ” 

Rockbell’s hand holding the wrench trembles in anger.

“For fun? Is that what you think? You think we all up and left our homes and comfortable military payroll for  _ fun _ ?!” 

“I’m sorry, is there a different motive here that makes what you do somehow okay?” 

“Taking you in was a fucking mistake,” Rockbell spits. “You’re nothing like my crew. You don’t have an empathetic bone in your body.” 

“Then let me go.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I’m not seeing how you can make a moral argument for your crew when you’re holding me here against my will.” 

Rockbell lets out a breath between clenched teeth. 

“Do you  _ know _ what atrocities the Amestrian military has committed? How many civilians have died because of direct orders from your generals? Have you heard of what happened in Ishval?” 

“And how many innocent people have been lost in pirate raids, huh?” Edward counters, moving to stand up to face her head on:

“Your kind  _ took my fucking brother _ .” 

His unsteady footing lessens the effect of his words, but Rockbell nonetheless stays her hand, a spark of surprise dimming the anger in her eyes. 

“Your brother..?” 

“What, does that shock you? It’s not like you’re too unfamiliar with the concept of kidnapping.” 

Edward gestures vaguely at himself and the room he’s been stuck in for several days. He can acutely feel the slight swaying of the boat under his feet. Rockbell lowers her wrench, holding up her other hand in a halting gesture. 

“Wait no, hold on.”

She’s unexpectedly earnest now, eyes searching his face.

“Your brother… he looks like you?” 

Edward scrunches his eyebrows together suspiciously. 

“He’s my brother. Of course we look alike.” 

“And he was kidnapped by pirates?” 

“Yes…? That’s my whole point I’m saying that-”

Edward is properly confused when all the anger runs away from her face and she stops paying attention to him. Her brows furrow and she turns away, clearly thinking hard about something. 

“Listen… did they have a flag that looks like this?” 

Rockbell hurries over to the desk, opening up her leather-bound book and flipping to a page with something on it he couldn’t make out from a distance. She walks back over to him, turning the page to face him. 

Edward feels his own face blanch as he sees the inky shape illuminated by the watery sunlight filtering through the window. He reaches into the pocket of his trousers to fish out the pocketwatch, cracking it open to extract the piece of parchment he had scribbled on so long ago. Rockbell watches as he unfolds the scrap to its full size. Edward holds it up wordlessly.

The symbols match. 

A winged snake eating its own tail. 

“We need to go see Captain Mustang right away.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think :-)


	6. Chapter 6

Rockbell grabs at his left wrist, tugging him as to follow her out of the infirmary. Edward complies, nearly stumbling over his automail leg.

His head is racing as she leads him through a lamplit inner deck, ducking easily under loose netting and low beams on their way to a small wooden ladder leading to an upper deck. Rockbell lets go of his arm as she ascends the ladder ahead of him. 

Edward glances down the dim hallway as he pauses to allow himself space behind Rockbell on the ladder. There are several other closed doors on this level- sleeping quarters or storage, perhaps. An itch at his instincts suggests the possibility of freedom through some open window or porthole hidden behind one of the shut doors. 

He shuts his eyes and feels the clammy metal of the silver pocketwatch in his hand. Edward flips it open briefly.  _ 3 Oct 11. _

Edward looks up to where Rockbell’s boots were passing their final rungs at the top of the ladder. He flicks his eyes back down the hallway. Potential answers or potential freedom?

He lets out a tight exhale and makes his decision. He shuts the watch and slides it deep into his pocket again. 

“Have you never climbed a ladder before?”

Rockbell peers down at him from the upper level. Edward rolls his eyes and scales the ladder as fast as he dares with the still-present ache in his side. 

“Come on,” she doesn’t grab his wrist again, but he doesn’t hesitate to follow her this time. Rockbell navigates the labyrinth of narrow hallways easily, nimbly sliding around the ship in a way that reminds Edward of the way otters jambol about on coastal rocks. 

Edward moves to duck around a hanging torchlamp when he unexpectedly collides with something solid that hadn’t been present moments before. 

“Oh ho ho, what’s this?”

A very broad, very muscled, very shirtless man peers down at Edward. He takes up nearly the entire hallway, cutting off Edward’s view of Rockbell. 

The man’s mouth is nearly obscured by a huge blond mustache that seems to frown itself- aside from a single, solitary curl atop his forehead, this is the only hair on this man’s entire head. His thick-lashed, pale blue eyes examine Edward’s appearance, pausing on the automail arm and the blue navy-standard trousers he wore.

“Hmm. You’re the navy boy, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.” 

Edward lets tension pool in his fists, ready to defend himself. He glances behind him to check for obstacles.

“Hmm. I suppose Rockbell’s taking you to see the captain.”

“Yes,” Edward answers cautiously. The other man lets out a short guffaw.

“Shouldn’t keep her waiting, then. The captain either, for that matter. Neither of them are especially patient people.” 

The mustached man moves with surprising grace out of Edward’s path. Edward can’t help but let surprise raise his eyebrows. He thought back to what Rockbell had said about the crew’s disliking his presence onboard.

“Thanks,” he mutters, and he turns to pick his way down the hallway where Rockbell had disappeared. 

“Good luck, laddie.” 

Edward looks back and nods at the man. He rounds a corner and sees a flash of Rockbell’s blonde hair down the hall. He can hear her quietly talking to someone he can’t quite see. 

She turns as soon as he approaches. The person she had been talking to went silent, and their head poked out of the doorframe Rockbell had been standing in front of. 

“This is Edward.”

The strange woman steps out fully into the hallway. She surveys him with stoic brown eyes. She is almost the same height as Edward, and commands an unmistakable authority in her very bones. He finds himself standing up straighter under her gaze. 

“Edward.” 

Her voice holds a coolness in its very vowels. From the accent, Edward would guess that she was from one of the Eastern coastal towns, same as him. 

“I’m guessing that your surname is Hohenheim?”

“It’s not.” 

She raises one blonde eyebrow. Rockbell sighs in impatience. 

“Can we go in and see the captain, Hawkeye?”

“Of course.”

The woman sizes up Edward. She wears a form-cut black shirt and a pair of faded khaki trousers. He doesn’t miss the golden-hilted dirk strapped to her thigh. She stands back, however, and lets Rockbell lead Edward through the wooden doorframe. 

The door is more ornate than the rest of the ship, inlaid with intricate carvings and flaked with faded gold paint. His footsteps are muffled as he steps into the room and he looks down to see a rich-woven red rug with braided dingy white tassels under his feet. 

The wooden walls of the captain’s forequarters holds several shelves of books and scrolls and multi-shaped glass bottles, all secured by narrow-built beams crossing to hold them in place against the rocking of the sea. There is an elaborately carved wooden desk against one wall, stacked high with unfurled scrolls. A wrought-reinforced window nearly the length of the room takes up the stern wall, letting sunlight stream in from outside. 

And in front of him, a black-haired man sits on a cushioned seat, steepling his fingers inquisitively. The short wooden table in front of the man holds a large map, weighted down with an assortment of objects- an inkwell, a low glass cup, an open journal, and a simple, slender knife.

The man himself is not particularly outstanding in appearance- he’s certainly not the kind of person Edward would expect to be a pirate captain. He guesses that the captain is around thirty years of age, but there’s an unusual quirk to his eyebrow when he meets Edward’s eyes that reminds him of the challenges often initiated between petty teenage rivals. His black eyes flash with something, then he bares his teeth in something of a greeting.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Edward.”

“Edward,” he repeats, nodding, looking him over. “You’re Captain Hohenheim’s kid for sure.”

Edward frowns and turns back to glance at Rockbell, expecting her to introduce the real reason why he was even here. She catches his eye and nods.

“Captain Mustang,” she begins, dipping her head in a small show of respect, “That’s exactly what we’re here to talk about. He has a brother.”

The captain raises his eyebrow, leaning back in his seat. 

“Does he now?”

Edward feels a bubbling of rage in his throat at the captain’s insolent nonchalance. Before he can say anything, though, Rockbell responds. 

“Yes sir, and he was kidnapped by the Ouroboros crew.” 

With that, Captain Mustang sits up straight again. He leans forward, black eyes narrowing as he studies Rockbell’s face. 

“Are you sure?”

Rockbell turns to look at Edward. 

“Show him what you showed me,” she murmurs. 

Edward extracts the watch from the pocket of his trousers. The captain watches him intently as he pries the silver face open, freeing the piece of parchment that he had drawn on so many years ago. He holds it up between two metal fingers.

“The man who took my brother had a tattoo of this symbol on his shoulder.” 

“Well shit,” Mustang says, running a hand through his close-cropped hair, “This is less than ideal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> expect updates to be a little less frequent- im going into my senior year of college, so my courses are keeping me pretty busy! i'll try to update once or twice a month, though! thanks for reading! :)


	7. Chapter 7

“Sir?” Hawkeye speaks up from the back of the room, “Latest intelligence from Hughes was that the Ouroboros crew was last seen in the western sea.”

The captain picks up the small silver knife on the table, drawing the tip of it delicately over the surface of the map like a stylus. Edward can’t read the script on the key upside down, but it appeared to be a map of Amestris. His eyes follow the point of the knife to where Mustang is gesturing to. 

“What port were they closest to?”

“Pendleton, I believe, sir.”

The captain frowns, turning his head to peer at the far left side of the parchment.

Edward had never been as far west as Pendleton- he had seen it in some of the dusty atlases in the navy libraries, but on most maps it was absent due to its insignificant size. 

“What would they be doing near Pendleton? That’s nearly a three week’s clip from any notable port.” 

Mustang seems to be thinking out loud more than directing his words at anyone in particular. 

“Lieutenant, where was the last place Hohenheim was seen?”

Edward quirks an eyebrow at the military title Mustang addressed her with, but remains silent. He makes a note to ask Rockbell about it later.

“It’s been several months, sir.” 

“Do we still have the correspondence?”

Hawkeye is already sifting through the mountains of parchment on the far desk, scanning dark lines of handwritten script with her back turned to the rest of them. 

“Here it is,” she reports, continuing to read the words on the page before handing the piece to Captain Mustang.

“This is dated from eight months ago.” 

“So it’s useless information by now,” Edward speaks up before Hawkeye could respond to the captain. He crosses his arms and shifts his weight onto his automail leg. Three pairs of eyes turn to him with varying levels of surprise. He finds a font of energetic defiance somewhere inside him.

“Am I right? I don’t think it matters much exactly where my father has fucked off to at this point? All you want is to ransom me off to him for, I dunno, information? And that’s what you think the Ouroboros crew is up to as well.” 

The captain opens his mouth to speak, but Edward continues.

“Because, you see, it wouldn’t make sense to ransom either of us for money. Everybody knows that our father is more well-off than a pirate has any right to be, of course, but so are you.”

Edward gestured vaguely around at the fine furnishings in the quarters he stood in. 

“Gold is almost certainly off the table as a motivator here. So what’s so important that Hohenheim has that can’t be bought with coin? What’s worth kidnapping my brother straight off of a navy ship? What’s worth keeping me alive as a prisoner when the rational choice would be to kill me? What’s going on?”

Hawkeye and the captain share a near-surreptitious look. Surprise is written in Captain Mustang’s eyes for a brief moment before it’s steeled out and replaced with something else that Edward doesn’t quite recognize. 

“You’ve got your father’s brain, don’t you?”

“I share  _ nothing _ with that bastard.” 

Mustang raises an amused brow. 

“If you say so.” 

There’s a moment or two of quiet before the mirth leaves the captain’s face. He sighs- a long, obnoxious affair- before clearing his throat to speak.

“You’re obviously a very smart man, Edward. I meant no offense by likening you to your father. Of course, you have to understand what position you yourself are in, what with where your allegiances lie. You’re not exactly in a place to demand information from anyone.”

“Because you’re so afraid that I’m going to escape and go tell all of your secrets to the government?”

Edward moved closer to the edge of the captain’s low table, allowing the irritation to show plainly on his face in order to make his point ineffably clear. He doesn’t miss Hawkeye’s hand immediately go to the dirk strapped on her thigh. He ignores it and continues.

“I know we have only just made each others’ acquaintance, Captain Mustang, but there is something that you need to know about me before you can start leaping to these kinds of assumptions.

“I do not know if you have me sorted as some tight-laced navy boy to the bone, but let me clear something up for you: I have exactly one loyalty in life, and that is the promise that I made to myself to find my brother.”

Edward is standing over the table now, watching the hard, flinty eyes of the captain search his own. The air in the chamber was practically humming with tension, and Edward could hear Rockbell shift uncomfortably on her feet behind him.

“I assure you, no  _ allegiance _ ,” Edward spat the word, “will get in the way of me finding him. No matter what it takes. If I have to join a god damn pirate crew, then I will.

“Because in the years I’ve been looking for him, this is the closest I’ve gotten to any concrete answers. I’m not going to let them slip away now. Keep that in mind, when you start making assumptions about me.” 

Captain Mustang is regarding Edward with a rather bemused look as he finishes his speech. 

“Let me get this straight,” he starts, leaning forward on his elbows, “You’d risk the punishment of desertion in order to find your brother?” 

Edward lifts his chin assertively.

“Yes.”

“And you’re angling to join my company?” 

“If it gets me any closer to the Ouroboros crew.”

“Hmm.”

Mustang turns to look at Hawkeye. She is evaluating Edward with a rather strange look in her eyes. 

“Lieutenant?” 

She does not answer immediately. Her gaze turns to Rockbell. 

“Winry, what do you think?”

Rockbell clears her throat. Edward turns.

“I’ve been around him for the past five days. He seems uh… naive. He’s got a lot of manners to learn. Even more things to  _ unlearn _ . But I believe him when he says he just wants to find his brother.” 

“That being said,” Rockbell continues, “it will not be a popular decision if we do take him on as ours.” 

“There will be backlash,” Hawkeye agrees. 

“Something tells me that might be good for him.”

Edward is not particularly fond of the smirk on the captain’s face. He exhales and focuses on the comforting weight of the silver watch in his trouser pocket.

“You understand what all this means, right?” 

“That I’d be a deserter and hang with the rest of you if caught?”

The captain looks altogether too smug.

“Must be a pretty special brother- wish that I had some brother as tenacious as you looking out for me.” 

Edward doesn’t know what to say to that. He resorts to a sort of nod. Captain Mustang clasps his hands together and stands. 

“Let’s see how he gets on with the rest of the crew, then I’ll make my decision. Miss Rockbell, take him up and show him around a bit. Bring him back here before sunset. I want a full report.”

“Yes, sir.”

Edward sends a last glance back at Hawkeye and Mustang before following Rockbell out of the captain’s quarters. Mustang nods at him with a small, patronizing smile. He scowls once his back is turned to him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an anomaly, as far as my usual writing pace goes! next chapter will have some fun meeting-the-crew interactions! keep in mind that i'm going to be bending canon quite a bit (it is an AU, after all), so you might be surprised with some of the crew members ;-)


	8. Chapter 8

Edward doesn’t say anything for the first twenty paces or so as Rockbell leads him back down the captain’s quarters hallway. 

“Naive?”

Rockbell doesn’t stop or turn around, but he can practically hear her roll her eyes at him. 

“Of all of the things said in there, that was what you wanted to talk about?”

Before he can even respond, she grins over her shoulder at him.

“That’s naivety.” 

She slides around a beam laden with loose ropes and metal hooks. Edward follows her. The narrow hallways are branched and confusing, as they tend to be in the belly of a boat, but Edward could swear that they are going a different way than they came. 

“Where are we going?”

“Topside.”

Rockbell doesn’t give him any more than that, and continues her easy navigation a few paces ahead of him. 

Edward glowers at the back of her head.

Several ladders and labyrinthian hallways later, Edward follows Rockbell to a wooden door and finds himself blinking at the overwhelmingly bright sunlight on the top deck. He instinctively brings his hand up to shield his eyes, willing his sight to adjust. 

Three masts as thick as tree trunks rise out of the wooden deck, towering yards and yards above his head. Atop the main skysail sits a black flag, Edward notes, but the rest of the layout is as standard as any navy ship he had ever been on- the three main masts square-rigged and interspersed with triangular staysails and a large, elegant jib flying over the front of the boat. 

They are far from any visible land, and the seas are sapphire blue, glinting in the afternoon sun. A few of the closer crew members’ heads look up curiously at Edward, but the majority are far too engaged to pay him any mind. The overwhelming spread of the crew seem to be young or middle-aged, all well-built men and women. Even without what Rockbell had told him, Edward would have been able to recognize this as a crew of ex-navy personnel. 

There’s a more laid-back energy to the deck than he was used to, with raucous laughter and relaxed shoulders and the occasional hoot or call from one rail to the other. As he watches, a small white-haired woman swings gracefully down from the rigging to land cat-light on her leather booted feet. Her posture is certainly that of someone who once knew the rigorous discipline of the military, but has since adopted the fluency allowed by a freedom from schedule. 

So much is going on atop the deck Edward can hardly track it all with his eyes- he watches as a slender balding man hauls a massive fish aboard to a loud cheer from a small group around him. Two older women spar gleefully with training swords, and the intermittent crack of their parries rings out across the deck. A few younger crewmembers work at a coil of frayed hempen rope, unravelling kinks and knots as they unfurl it on the sunbleached wooden planks.

There are nearly twenty or thirty crewmembers, all involved in tasks or boisterous conversation, and Edward has the realization that none of these people look like pirates. Were it not for their mismatched clothing and the black flag waving yards above their heads, Edward would assume that this was simply a band of navy recruits whose commanding officer had taken a recess and left them to their own devices. Aside from a few daggers strapped onto belts or the odd dirk tucked into the leg of a boot, none of these people look from first impression like they were capable of the violence tied to a pirate’s life. 

“This the laddie who fucked up Havoc?” 

A stocky man rises from where he was crouched near the railing, tying off a rope to a low metal cleat. He has a crop of rust-colored hair atop his head with close-shaven sides, and a broad jaw set with an air of disdain as he regards Edward.

A few heads turn at the man’s words.

“Aye,” Winry says, raising her chin to meet his gaze. 

Edward feels the back of his head ache where he had been knocked unconscious during the boarding. His memories are rather hazy- cannon smoke and searing pain muddling faces and events, but the man must be talking about one of the pirates he had driven back with his blade. 

“And he’s walkin’ up here like a free man?”

“Breda…” 

“Why shouldn’t I?” Edward snaps defiantly. 

The man sneers at him.

“Why shouldn’t you? You damn near killed one of our best gunners!” 

A few pirates have gradually started to pay attention to them, nearby conversation starting to die down. 

“And I’m supposed to lay there like a dead fish when someone points a cannon at my crewmates?” 

The broad man crosses two beefy arms across his shirted chest. He opens his mouth to retort, but Rockbell interrupts.

“Breda, you would have done the same ten years ago when you sailed aboard a navy boat.” 

He squints cautiously at her. Rockbell has both hands on her waist, commanding an air of authority despite her smaller frame. 

“Maybe so, but a man’s got a right to be fuckin’ angry when some loyalist son of a bitch carves up his comrade, don’t you think?” 

“Havoc is fine, you dramatic twat. Your quarrel is with the military itself, not this one enlistee who happened upon our ship.” 

Edward watches with waning rage as the man named Breda sighs and rolls his eyes. He sizes him up, condescension written across his face. 

The heated tension slowly cools under Rockbell’s presence. There’s a moment of quiet between them before Breda purses his lips inquisitively. 

“Hmm. So I guess he’s joinin’ up, then?” 

Rockbell nods. Breda harrumphs. 

“The navy dog son of Hohenheim onboard the Lady Flame. It is ever a day.” 

The man gives Edward one last lingering look-over, then a reluctant nod. He drops his hands to his side, then offers his right in greeting. 

“When you meet him, you’d better give Havoc an apology. And don’t go brandishing a blade at anyone else aboard- although I reckon I’m not the only one you’ll have trouble with if you do.” 

Edward takes his hand in a firm shake and nods in acknowledgement. The man’s steely blue eyes regard him for another second, then he turns back to the port railing to continue working.

A woman with pale skin and bound-back curly black hair lifts her head from just behind Breda, where she was fastening a length of rope between sail and mast. 

“I’m just glad you found yourself a new toy, Rockbell.”

Her smile is teasing and wide, her grey eyes sparkling. She wipes her hands on her dark khaki pants and comes up to clap Rockbell firmly on the shoulder. 

“Rebecca!”

Rebecca shows an entire set of surprisingly straight teeth when she laughs again, looking conspiratorially between Rockbell and him. Edward frowns and the tips of his ears begin to feel warm.

She notices the look of confusion on his face and snickers again.

“Your automail!” She gestures to his arm, “I was starting to worry that Rockbell here was going to resort to chopping one of our limbs off just so she’d have an excuse to work on some automail!”

Rockbell scoffs in indignation but the corners of her eyes crinkle in amusement. 

“I’m not that obsessed with automail.” 

Rebecca ignores her.

“Has she already asked if she could work on your arm?”  
This pirate is, again, nothing like he expected. Rebecca’s short frame is packed with muscle and there are boat-calluses on her palms, but her face is kind and gently worn with laughter. 

“She didn’t even ask first.”

Rebecca gasps, scandalized. 

“Winry!” 

Rockbell crosses her arms indignantly. 

“He was unconscious! And his arm was in bad shape! What else was I supposed to do?!” 

“Poor lad,” Rebecca grins. “Captured by the one and only pirate crew with a world-class automail gearhead aboard. Seems you’re in to be her favorite person here, besides me, of course.” 

Edward doesn’t know what to say to that, and tightens his jaw in an awkward half-shrug. The woman guffaws, cuffing him gently on the arm as she sidles past. She calls back towards Rockbell:

“Come by and tell me all about it later, Win.”

She winks good-naturedly before turning away, leaving Edward to cock a single eyebrow at Rockbell.

“World-class automail gearhead? Didn’t know I was in that bad.” 

Rockbell rolls her eyes, but he notices the hint of a smile pull at the corners of her mouth.

“Come on, you’ve still got people to meet.”

___

The journey back down to the infirmary is short, but no less labyrinthian than before. Edward knows his way around a ship better than most, but the paths Rockbell weaves through the narrow hallways are near-impossible to keep track of. The Lady Flame is a behemoth of a boat, he now appreciates, having seen it from both below and above deck. 

Edward thinks to himself that these pirates must have to do pretty well for themselves to maintain a ship of this size and splendor. 

The small rippled-glass window of the infirmary barely lets in the last few rays of the setting sun, and casts the inside of the room in a warm golden-red haze. Rockbell goes to light a candle, and he stands, squinting out the window for a few breaths, feeling the heat of the dying sun against his face and neck. 

“What did you think?”

Rockbell rests the backs of her thighs against the low edge of her desk and settles her weight casually as she turns to look at him. Edward blinks, taking another second to answer her question.

“None of you look like pirates.” 

“That’s because we aren’t,” she pauses, “not really.” 

The ship carves a slight angle and her blonde hair is suddenly full of sunlight, almost too bright to look at. 

“We’re all just trying to set something right.” 

Edward, again, doesn’t know what to say in response. 

Her blue eyes meet his with a curious grin at the corners of her mouth.

“I think you’ll fit in around here better than you think.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's been so long, a lot of life happened! going to try to get back into writing this fic! (thank you to everyone who messaged me about continuing this- you're the reason i got back to writing!)


	9. Chapter 9

Morning light rouses him from his sleep, and for once Edward awakens of his own volition and sits up on the edge of his cot. To his right, a yard or two across the room, Rockbell snores softly, only her mess of tangled blonde hair visible atop her pillow. 

Edward squints out the window, judging it to be still fairly early in the morning. He runs a hand through his hair, loose from sleep, frowning slightly at just how long it has gotten. The ends of his golden hair now reach nearly to his elbows- he makes a note to look into cutting it soon. 

The infirmary is bathed in the pale morning sunlight, and the ceiling is patterned with rays deflected from the ocean. He glances at Rockbell’s sleeping form, and to the modest pile of books on top of her desk. 

He rises, stretching his arms above his head. While Edward knows he’s no longer the short, scrawny kid he had been at fifteen, he still takes a brief second of pride when his fingertips brush the low ceiling at the peak of his stretch. 

Edward shuffles quietly over to Rockbell’s desk, stooping to read the letters printed on the book spines. Most of the titles are related to automail or mechanics, to none of his surprise, but a handful are old medical texts, dated from several years before his own birth. 

He picks up the most worn of the books, a leather-bound journal of medicine. Curiously, Edward examines a faded handwritten inscription on the inner cover:

_ Dr. Urey Rockbell, 1699 _

Rockbell? Edward glances over to the still-snoring pile of blankets to his right. His eyebrows furrow. Looking now at the rest of the books, almost all of them had their owner’s name scrawled on the cover or inner page- most of these had belonged to Rockbell’s grandmother, Pinako. Who is Urey? Her grandfather? Her father? An older brother?

He makes a note to ask Rockbell about it when she awakens. In the meantime, however, he flips through the book, glancing at diagrams and protocols and observations, handwritten notes in ink and hard charcoal and graphite littering the margins. Half of it means nothing to him, written in numbers and a near-foreign language. The other half is symbols he recognizes from his studies into the Ouroboros tattoo- alchemical formulas. He frowns. 

As he continues reading, he notices four different sets of handwriting in the book- the dominant one, he assumes, belongs to the man named Urey: a smaller, cramped hand. Pinako’s scrawled script marks notes in barely-legible formulaic shorthand on several pages, and Edward recognizes one other familiar handwriting- the same that labels the diagrams and notes strewn over the desk he sits at- the youngest Rockbell’s. 

Yet one is entirely unfamiliar, absent from the rest of the texts on the desk. This journal is multigenerational, Edward assumes, a compilation of at least three generations of Rockbells- perhaps the writing belongs to someone long dead. But that would mean-

The Rockbell in the room with him stirs in her bunk. Edward continues to examine the text until he feels her gaze on him.

“What are you doing?”

Her voice is scratchy from sleep, and he looks over to see her sitting up in her cot, blue eyes bleary. 

“Reading.”

Rockbell leans forward, resting her chin in her hand. 

“I can see that.”

“Mmhm.”

“Which of  _ my _ books are you reading?”

Edward gives her a level side eye. 

“Some alchemy journal. Who is Urey?”

Her face darkens. 

“You shouldn’t mess with that,” she says, all traces of sleep gone from her voice. “That’s important research.”

He can’t say he’s entirely surprised at the seriousness in her tone, but he’s taken aback by the severity. Regardless, he pushes her, closing the book in his lap.

“Who’s Urey?”

Rockbell stands from her cot, looking rather non-threatening with her untucked shirt reaching halfway to her knees. It’s not until he sees the unexpected fire behind her pressed lips that he blinks. 

She steps forward and snatches the book up from Edward’s grasp, setting it back on the pile of books with a protective hand laid atop it. She turns to look at him. 

“Urey was my father. Died in Ishval.”

Edward frowns. Pieces fall together in his head slowly, then all at once. 

“That’s why you-” he pauses, thinks. “That’s why you’re here, right?”

He looks at the book underneath her pressed fingertips. 

“You’re looking for something, aren’t you? That’s what your father was researching? And your grandmother before him? She left her life as an automail mechanic to look for something… what is it?”

Rockbell looks at him. A small line appears between her thin blonde eyebrows as she opens her mouth to speak.

“I-”

Before she can say anything else, Edward adds the final piece to the puzzle in his mind. He stops her mid-syllable.

“And it’s the same thing Ouroboros is looking for, isn’t it?”

“Why would you-”

Edward looks at the desk surface without seeing it, lost in thought as he speaks. He almost forgets that Rockbell is in the room with him. 

“Whatever this is, my father knows what, or where it is. That’s why they would take my brother. That’s why you kidnapped me. That’s why you’re even here, that’s why-”

“Edward,” she says, breaking his concentration, “it’s just a research journal.”

She’s blatantly lying to him, he knows this, but he continues to sit there, gears turning in his head. 

“Who’s the other author?”

“What?”

“Who’s the other author in this book?” 

“I don’t know what youre talking about.” 

“That’s a lie.”

Rockbell says nothing, leveling a steely glare at him. He stares back, unflinching. She presses her lips together.

“Listen, Edward. There are some things out there that people are better off not knowing.” 

“It’s related to Hohenheim somehow, isn’t-”

“Not everything is about your damn father!” 

She stands above him, one fist slammed atop the research journal, her skin burnished with a simmering flush of anger. Her shout hangs heavy in the still infirmary air. Rockbell’s chest lifts with a slow, measured breath, and she squeezes her eyes shut for a heartbeat. 

“Why don’t you go topside and make yourself useful. I think you’re starting to forget whose infirmary you’re staying in.” 

“Fine.”

Jaw set, Edward stands from the desk. 

“I understand having secrets, but if this gets in the way of finding my brother, I will stop at nothing to figure it out.” 

Rockbell regards him with unflinching blue eyes. 

“Go find Hawkeye. Tell her you’re cleared for deckwork.”

Without another word, Edward leaves the infirmary, letting the wooden door swing heavy behind him. He doesn’t look back. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, i'm glad you've read this far! I hope you're into pirates, because if not you certainly clicked on the wrong fic! Leave a comment if you like, or you can contact me @pearlecsent on tumblr or @redglaree on twitter. I'm going to try to update this twice a week, but if you notice it's been a while, shoot me a message or leave a comment to hold me accountable for my lazy writing crimes. Thanks for reading and get ready for some pirates, babey! :-)


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